Generally, a refrigerator is a home appliance which enables food to be stored at a low temperature in an internal storage space covered by a door. To this end, the refrigerator is configured so that an inside of the storage space is cooled using cool air generated by heat exchange with a refrigerant circulated through a refrigeration cycle, and thus the stored food may be stored in an optimum state.
Recent refrigerators have become bigger and have been multifunctionalized according to a change in a dietary life and a trend toward high-quality of a product. Refrigerators having various structures and equipment for convenience in consideration of user convenience are being released.
For example, consumer needs for a cooling device which can rapidly cool beverages or alcoholic drinks having a room temperature in a short time have been increased. To satisfy such consumer needs, various types of cooling devices which enable the beverages or alcoholic drinks to be quickly cooled at one side in a refrigerator have been proposed.
In a refrigerator equipped with a conventional cooling device, a button which is able to select the number of beverage containers accommodated in the cooling device is provided, and a cooling time according to the number of the beverage containers is set by operating the button.
However, in this method, it is inconvenient for a user to directly manually input the number of beverage containers which will be accommodated to cool the drinks, and also an additional manufacturing cost for hardware and software configuring such a mechanism is generated.
Also, in Korean Patent Application No.2010-0115536 which is related to the cooling device and was filed by the applicant of the present invention, a direction of an object to be cooled which is placed at a tray of the cooling device is limited to only one direction. Therefore, to accommodate a plurality of objects to be cooled, e.g., beverage cans, the tray should have a long length, and thus there is a disadvantage that a volume of a case of the cooling device is increased.
As the volume of the case is increased, a capacity of a storage compartment in which the cooling device is installed is reduced. Accordingly, in a small capacity refrigerator in which a storage compartment has a short length in a frontward and backward direction, the cooling device may not be installed.